The civic conventions in Philadelphia present a different context for legitimizing urban agriculture projects and mobilizing to protect threatened gardens. In Philadelphia, as evidenced by prior work and my interviews, cynicism about the local government runs high. There are fewer opportunities to seek public resources for resident-driven projects, and land is controlled by a complex web of bureaucracy that seems to require professional skills to navigate successfully. Philadelphia’s civic conventions have not produced a political opportunity structure as conducive to bottom-up governance. However, the widespread cynicism about government, especially among Black residents who make up the majority of the city’s population, has created a discursive opportunity structure more receptive to social movement mobilization and demands for far-reaching policy changes. Ideas about good government and resident input have translated into infrastructure for bottom-up governance in Milwaukee and also, as the next section will illustrate, in Seattle; however, Philadelphia’s civic conventions are different. The city does not have a matching grant program to support neighborhood improvement initiatives, a tool which has proven valuable for developing and legitimizing community gardens in Milwaukee and Seattle. Like other cities in the US, Philadelphia receives Community Development Block Grants from the federal government, plant bench indoor and over time some of these funds have been used for greening vacant lots.
This investment, however, was directed by the city in collaboration with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society rather than being driven by residents. Most of the CDBG-funded greening has involved removing trash, laying down fresh sod, and putting up a small wooden fence to deter future dumping—the “clean-and-green” treatment—whereas resident-driven projects on vacant lots tend to establish community gathering spaces such as gardens, playgrounds or pocket parks. Residents have built hundreds of gardens across Philadelphia with assistance from PHS, the County Extension office, and other entities; however, the funding for these projects has come mostly from private foundations and fundraising efforts rather than from the city. While PHS has established its legitimacy as a provider of greening services , until recently most individual gardens were not viewed as legitimate even if PHS was involved in their development. The majority of the city’s gardens have operated without formal permission; the city’s revocable garden licenses were hard to obtain and their revocability did not engender much trust in their value . Even for gardens that secured a revocable license , the city did not keep a record of which lots contained gardens and long categorized all of the city’s agricultural spaces as “vacant” . Without the bottom-up governance infrastructure that Milwaukee and Seattle have for facilitating neighborhood initiatives, gardens in Philadelphia have not been able to gain much legitimacy by seeking support from the city government. As others have stated, the citizens of Philadelphia have notably little faith that their government is going to support resident ideas that serve the public interest.
Philadelphia politics have long been dominated by the Democratic Party, which uses a ward system to organize voters and control which candidates get the party’s endorsement; this dynamic seems to have contributed to civic conventions in which corruption is commonplace. In 1903, Lincoln Steffens detailed the corruption of machine politics in US cities, describing Philadelphia as “the most corrupt and the most contented” [quoted in Fiorillo 2021]. Political corruption has not abated in the century since, with an ongoing parade of congressional representatives, state senators, and members of the Philadelphia City Council being convicted of fraud, bribery, conspiracy, and other corruption charges . Just in 2020, City council member Kenyatta Johnson and his wife were indicted for corruption related to a land deal in his council manic district . In Philadelphia’s civic conventions, honest governance is not to be expected, and the public is widely cynical about the local government’s ability to function fairly or efficiently. Cynicism runs especially deep for many of the city’s Black residents. Alongside the history of corrupt and inefficient governance runs a history of dispossession, violence and abandonment with clear racial patterns. Black Philadelphians are well aware of this history, which fosters an additional layer of cynicism that Brownlow calls “the collective resentment over the politics and geographies of race-based neglect” . As noted in chapter 1, racial inequality in public resources, capital investment, and urban environments is not unique to Philadelphia, nor is the extra skepticism in the Black community’s civic conventions engendered by their understanding of institutional racism.
For example, Beamish found that civic discourse in response to plans for a bio-defense research facility in Roxbury, Massachusetts built on widely understood narratives about social injustice in the racialized distribution of environmental hazards and a history of “institutional recreancy.” In Philadelphia, the Black community’s historically rooted mistrust in city institutions has impacted the shape and direction of social movement activities to secure urban land for community gardens. As mentioned in chapter 2, PHS prioritized gaining legitimacy for its Philadelphia Green program in the eyes of its white elite donor base and has cultivated close ties with city officials who sign large contracts for the program’s greening work. Maintaining legitimacy with these audiences helped keep the program financially viable, but institutionalization with city elites also works to undermine the organization’s legitimacy with those skeptical of the prevailing order . In Philadelphia, the dynamics of cynical civic conventions and the legitimation strategy of the city’s main gardening organization have informed a split in organizational trajectories—one that provides a nominally “community-based” service , and one that is explicitly oriented to social movement work —rather than a hybridization from CBO to SMO within one entity.Evidence from interviews and historical documents shows that urban agriculture advocates involved in land preservation efforts understand the widely-shared ideas regarding cynicism and mistrust of the government. The code for appearance of impropriety was more common in Philadelphia materials than in those from Milwaukee or Seattle. Cynicism about government was expressed in Philadelphia twice as frequently as in Milwaukee and three times as often as in Seattle. One community organizer opined regarding the city’s land disposition process, “their institutional structure, and the way that power flows, is not meant to be understood. That’s the way it is” . Such sentiments were especially common among advocates affiliated with Soil Generation, but even interviewees affiliated with more “insider” nonprofits like PHS expressed some degree of exasperation with the city’s land use governance. Especially given the high number of cultivated parcels the city has put up for auction without notice, urban agriculture advocates in Philadelphia have little faith that the local government will look out for their interests by default. One specific element of Philadelphia’s civic conventions stands out for its impact on land disposition, a political idea known as “council manic prerogative” that has become infrastructure over time. Closely related to Kenyatta Johnson’s corruption indictment and the cynicism that many urban agriculture advocates expressed in interviews, greenhouse rolling racks this convention gives district council members an especially firm grip over land deals. City Council must pass an ordinance to approve any land dispensation, and all of the other council members almost invariably vote the same way as the council member whose district contains the parcel in question. Using council manic prerogative, council members supportive of urban agriculture can help expedite sale of publicly owned garden lots that have the resources and wherewithal to access the council member and navigate the rest of the bureaucratic process for a land transfer . However, unsupportive council members can single handedly block a sale in their district—no matter what resources or legitimacy a garden group may bring. Virtually everyone I interviewed who works to secure land for urban agriculture in Philadelphia identified council manic prerogative as a barrier to preservation, but they see little chance of changing it because the council members themselves would need to vote for a policy change, and they have no incentive to reduce their own power. As development pressure has increased, with insider strategies out of reach for most of the city’s gardeners, urban agriculture advocates affiliated with Soil Generation have responded with sustained social movement mobilization to increase the legitimacy and tenure of the city’s community gardens.
In short, local cynicism regarding governance has opened a discursive opportunity structure for promoting collective action and securing other forms of policy change. As described in chapter 2, Philadelphia’s urban agriculture movement started to get organized in 2012 and 2013 around changes to the city’s zoning code. After hearing directly from city officials that they did not consider urban agriculture to be a constituency, advocate Amy Laura Cahn set out to make this constituency more vocal and visible by funding a community organizing effort through the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia . Her group initiated the Campaign for Healthier Foods and Greener Spaces to oppose a proposed zoning amendment that would have restricted garden activities. As the campaign launched, Cahn was quoted in PlanPhilly arguing against the proposed amendment by saying, “Creating this level of bureaucracy and legislating community participation is just a barrier. It’s not adding value” . This framing of the proposal appealed to the negative views of government that created a discursive opportunity structure within the local civic conventions—that is, high levels of bureaucracy creating barriers to community participation. The coalition that Amy Laura Cahn helped to build, Healthy Foods Green Spaces, brought together many organizations from across the city, including PHS and the Neighborhood Gardens Association, to advocate for maintaining community gardens as a land use in Philadelphia. While PHS and the Neighborhood Gardens Association had been able to preserve a handful of community gardens over the years, they recognized that the lengthy, costly, parcel-by-parcel strategy they had relied upon until then was not enough to meet the citywide need. For one thing, the professional skills and working relationships with city officials that made the organizations’ efforts successful could not be scaled up easily. For another, their efforts could succeed only for gardens that the city was willing to preserve; in other situations, the council member whose district contained a garden might have other plans for the land, and because of council manic prerogative, preservation without their assent would be impossible. While gardeners or other urban agriculture organizations might take on a strategy of public pressure to overcome council member obstinance, PHS was unwilling to risk its close relationships with city officials— and the large maintenance contracts they approve—in order to preserve an individual garden. Nevertheless, recognizing the growing threat to garden tenure, they joined with other organizations in Healthy Foods, Green Spaces to advocate for a more streamlined land disposition process. As this coalition organized numerous constituencies and mounted a high visibility campaign to establish the Philadelphia Land Bank, PHS participated mostly in the background, donating professional skills such as graphic design to the coalition—but not mobilizing their gardeners to get involved in the civic process. This choice of actions makes sense given PHS’s organizational commitments and the legitimacy it had cultivated. With a long history in the city and roots in its elite social circles, PHS would be more likely to take for granted the city’s existing way of operating than to question or publicly challenge this system; moreover, outsider social movement tactics and vocal political organizing might threaten PHS’s legitimacy with city agencies and with its elite donor base. Yet, as noted above, civic conventions among everyday residents of Philadelphia— especially the city’s nonwhite majority—differ from the perspectives held by the social elite, and cynicism about government is high. Organizations and activists with less history of collaboration with city agencies and an outsider’s perspective on how the city functions have taken a more explicitly critical stance than PHS regarding the city’s governance. In the realm of urban agriculture advocacy, Soil Generation embodies this stance. As described in chapter 2, leaders of the Healthy Foods Green Spaces coalition evolved it into Soil Generation, which is “a Black and Brown led coalition of gardeners, farmers, individuals, and community-based organizations working to ensure people of color regain community control of land and food, to secure access to the resources necessary to determine how land is used, address community health concerns, grow food and improve the environment” . As this statement makes clear, Soil Generation is focused on changing power relations in Philadelphia so that people of color have a seat at the table in decisions about land use and the local food system.